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When you walk into a store and make a purchase with cash you can be completely anonymous (except perhaps to the security camera). Online shopping is so convenient, but when you buy online, you lay your soul bare, giving up your e-mail address, physical address, credit card number, and more. Even highly reputable vendors suffer data breaches. Shop Shield from Kemesa LLC (the company name comes from "keeps mesafe") is designed to minimize your exposure of personal information while shopping online.

Shop Shield installs as a Firefox toolbar for the Mac and for Windows
XP and later; an Internet Explorer version is under development. You
can also use it directly from the company's Web site without installing
the toolbar. It's a secure payment service that lets you make online
purchases while exposing as little personal information as possible.
When you need to give an e-mail address to the online merchant, Shop
Shield supplies a DEA (disposable e-mail address) that's specific to
that merchant. Messages get routed to your real address automatically,
and if you start getting spam you can cut off that particular DEA (and
chastise the merchant).

In a similar fashion, when it's time to pay up, Shop Shield supplies a one-use credit card number with a valid billing address that isn't your address. For subscriptions and other on-going payments it can generate a reusable card that's valid only for one merchant. Of course, it has to fill in your real information for the shipping address, but only there. And yes, if the merchant goofs and ships to the billing address, Shop Shield will forward your package.

The service can also handle registration at secure non-shopping sites without forcing you to give away your actual e-mail address. Here again it will generate a DEA specific to the secure site and also generate a username and password that don't give away anything personal. It manages those login credentials for you, naturally, and also gives you a single spot to track all online activity managed by Shop Shield.

So how much does this service cost? It starts at... free! At the free level, you must back your purchases with a checking account, you can't use it for transactions under $25, and you can't use it to register with non-shopping sites. The "free plus" level lets you back your purchases with a major credit card and also removes the other limitations, but it requires a small fee for each use. For full unlimited use of the service you pay $9.99 a month or $99 a year. Too much to pay for peace of mind? There's a 60-day free trial period, so you can see what it's like before committing to a subscription.

But wait; haven't we just created a new problem? Now Shop Shield has your personal information on file. What if it loses your data?

According to the company's CTO, this is well-nigh impossible. It uses patent pending technology that encrypts and fragments your data, with function-specific servers that raise red flags if forced to do anything outside their function.

Kamesa can do this because there's nothing in its business model that requires (or even permits) selling the data to anybody. The Shop Shield toolbar can draw specific information out of the database as needed, but the design simply doesn't permit a wholesale data dump. Well, that's what they say; it would be hard to check. But the company is confident enough to offer up to $10,000 in reimbursement if your data is compromised.

The folks at Kemesa feel the product isn't truly complete until they finish the Internet Explorer version, so I'm holding off an actual review until then. But with holiday shopping coming up, now would be a very good time for Firefox users to take advantage of this service's 60-day free trial.

Neil Rubenking served as vice president and president of the San Francisco PC User Group for three years when the IBM PC was brand new. He was present at the formation of the Association of Shareware Professionals, and served on its board of directors. In 1986, PC Magazine brought Neil on board to handle the torrent of Turbo Pascal tips submitted by readers. By 1990, he had become PC Magazine's technical editor, and a coast-to-coast telecommuter. His "User to User" column supplied readers with tips...
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